Yesterday morning I went into the kitchen to discover a spider sitting on the drain cover on the garbage disposal side of the sink. When Luigi came in to make his coffee, I asked him to try to capture the spider and put him out on the balcony.

He tried to get that little sink inhabitant out of there with a tablespoon. Luigi chased after him with the spoon, but the spider's fast little legs kept running over the bowl of the spoon and falling off. Eventually he fell through the open drain(I don't know how the cover came off) into the garbage disposal. I forgot a couple of times, and turned on the faucet in that sink, forgetting to use the other side. I guess I thought by some miracle, he could crawl up out of there. But at that point he was probably already drowned. I didn't turn that garbage disposal on all day. Eventually late that night, I just had to run it. I don't know why I was so concerned about that spider.

As Luigi was making his coffee, he asked me if I heard the latest news about the Terrorists in Iraq. When I told him I hadn't , he started telling me a story he had read about on the Drudge Report, and how he and probably many other Internet cruisers were trying to search for photos of this story.

Some American Contractor had been captured. A Video had been released, showing him sitting in a chair with some masked Terrorists behind him. Luigi said that they had made some demands of releasing some Iraqui Prisoners. Then he went on to tell me that they, then, took a sword and cut off his head , and held it up to the still recording Video Camera. I couldn't believe what he had just told me. I think I said something like "Oh my God!".

I stared at the hole in the sink where the spider had fallen down. "You shouldn't tell me those things, Luigi. I can't even see violent movies................this is real." Luigi said that the man screamed. I stared at Luigi and cringed. I told him that I didn't understand. How could this man scream........I mean it's like a Guillotine. It is instant. I thought that it would be over in a millisecond and that he would not have known anything. "No", Luigi corrected me. "It takes a while to cut off the head like that."

Luigi immediately apologized to me when he saw me start sobbing. It was really awful to hear it the way he described it. I couldn't see the disposal anymore where the spider fell into because my eyes were cloudy with tears.

The rest of the day was kind of strange for me. And I really didn't feel like I was all there. I remember telling Luigi that it was so hard for me to understand, how there were people, in this world who could be so evil and yet think that their God had condoned the violence to rid the world of infidels.

The world is a strange place. I sometimes wonder, with all the Media and Political spinning junk going on in this election year, of how difficult and complicated the situation is and continues to engulf us. And how there are no easy answers. Iraq is a dangerous place now for Americans. So is Columbia, Venezuela, Indonesia, parts of Africa, etc.etc.etc. The Al Qaeda Cells are still growing.

But I am confident about one thing. In this Election Year I am voting for the smartest person. I am voting for the man who will not alienate us from other countries, and therefore unable to get help with World problems.

I am paranoid, and continue to think about Terrorists whenever I am in a large building downtown, in a Mall, or when I hear about a local Bomb scare. 9/11 has changed the soul of this country. It is not as it once was. But I still believe that the Candidate who runs against Bush ,ESPECIALLY, that he has fought in a War, will ultimately make the right decisions concerning the health and wellbeing and safety of this country. He will know World Diplomacy; think things through carefully and also help us domestically.

I did not start out in this post to make a Political statement. But it 'morphed' into one. I have other problems with the current Adminstration, one of which is very important to me. And that is the Environment. We will continue to (literally) lose more 'ground' if the present President continues hacking away at the inforce environmental laws already in place.

A spider is just a spider. A Man is a Man. Whatever other atrocities continue to make the Headlines and humble us with the cold reality of it all, we must still be aware of an important issue. We MUST give the chance of running this country to someone else; to a much more enlightened, much smarter , much more aware man. The fly in my soup is Bush.(just a shrub that needs to be removed from the garden)........ "Be gone, faithless one!!................(if this is not Shakespeare, please correct me!)